Robert Reece was a British comic playwright and librettist active in the Victorian era. He wrote many successful musical burlesques, comic operas, farces and adaptations from the French, including the English-language adaptation of the operetta Les cloches de Corneville, which became the longest-running piece of musical theatre in history up to that time. He sometimes collaborated with Henry Brougham Farnie or others.
Reece's The Forty Thieves, 1880
Poster for an 1886 production of Reece's Aladdin and the Forty Thieves
Comic opera, sometimes known as light opera, is a sung dramatic work of a light or comic nature, usually with a happy ending and often including spoken dialogue.
Rossini, circa 1810–1815
Poster for a 19th-century production of Orpheus in the Underworld
Scene from H.M.S. Pinafore, 1886 Savoy Theatre souvenir programme
A "toy soldier" from Babes in Toyland, 1903